But did you know: With its purchase of The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., GateHouse Media now owns 130 daily newspapers in 36 states (Register-Guard)
On Thursday, GateHouse Media purchased The Register-Guard in Eugene, Ore., from the Baker family, which has owned the newspaper since 1927. The purchase price was not disclosed. With the purchase of The Register-Guard, GateHouse now has 130 daily newspapers in 36 states. Plus, when the deal closes on March 1, The Register-Guard will be GateHouse’s largest operation on the West Coast: The newspaper has an average daily print circulation of 37,454, averages 600,000 unique visitors each month, and employs 240 people.

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The week in fact-checkingAs part of our fact-checking journalism project, Jane Elizabeth and Poynter’s Alexios Mantzarlis and Daniel Funke highlight stories worth noting related to truth in politics and on the Internet. This week’s round-up includes a new database of fact-checking research, why students are learning “to spot a fake by making one,” and what gets people to dismiss fake stories.

How did The Guardian put itself on the path to profitability? It stopped worrying about reach and started focusing on deeper relationships with its readers (Digiday)
Over the last two years, The Guardian has cut costs and taken on a new business model. Now, it’s on the brink of breaking even. A major factor in that accomplishment is a shift to a reader revenue model that “relies on voluntary contributions as opposed to restricting access,” Jessica Davies explains. And as part of that model, The Guardian has stopped chasing reach in favor of deepening its relationship with its most loyal readers: “We’re at the foothills of what we can do [with donations and paying members], and we’ll keep testing and learning our way through generic and topic-specific contributions,” Guardian Media Group CEO David Pemsel says.

Russian journalists are finding ways to start independent news organizations that aren’t under the Kremlin’s control(Calvert Journal)
In 2016, Elizaveta Osetinskaya was fired as the editor of Russia’s RBC Media for critical reporting. She then left Russia and came to the U.S. to start The Bell, an independent news organization that focuses on Russia. Osetinskaya says her startup is just one example of a growing trend of Russian journalists finding ways to build news organizations that aren’t owned by businesses that are vulnerable to the Kremlin’s control. “Before, media was run with oligarch or private money… [but] now it is being run by people for whom media is an obsession,” she explains on this shift. Some other examples include Mediazona, which reports on Russia’s prison system, and Meduza.

Google is testing an app in Nashville and Oakland that lets people submit stories about their local communities(Slate)
Google is starting to test an app that lets people publish and share their own local news stories called Bulletin. The app is being tested in Nashville, Tenn., and Oakland, Calif., and is described by Google as “an app for contributing hyperlocal stories about your community, for your community, right from your phone.” Though the launch of Bulletin hasn’t gotten much attention, Slate’s Will Oremus writes that it “sounds like a super-lightweight content management system, aimed at amateur journalists or anyone else who wants to live-blog a news event or report a news story in a way that has a chance to reach a broad audience.”